Friday 10 August 2007 06.12 EDT
First published on Friday 10 August 2007 06.12 EDT

A fugitive Basque terrorist charged with multiple killings stands accused of abandoning his 12-year-old son on a remote and dangerous mountainside when he thought police were on his trail.

Jose Maria Zaldua Korta, 58, alias Aitona, a veteran member of Eta, the Basque separatist terrorist group, who is wanted on at least 10 separate murder charges, was on the run again yesterday.

Although detained in France on three occasions, he has eluded justice and with his wife and son spent several years in exile in Algeria, Mexico and Uruguay.

But French and Spanish police now know that the burly explosives expert, has returned to Europe after a secret holiday with his young son, in a remote part of the Pyrenees, went seriously wrong.

A shepherd on the French side of the Portalé pass high in the Pyrenees found the boy in the dark, bedraggled and disorientated. He was taken 40 miles to a hospital in Pau. Police were called after the child would not answer questions about how he had got lost in the mountains and would not give his complete name.

Finally, he said that he was 12 and that he lived in Hasparren, a French town 60 miles west of where he was found, and gave a garbled name for his mother.

It was only when they identified her as Lourdes Garai Aguirre, 49, from Bilbao, Zaldua Korta's wife, that Spanish and French anti-terrorist squads were alerted.

On Wednesday, the boy's mother was taken for questioning in Bayonne as her house was searched. There was no sign of the fugitive terrorist. Mother and child were later allowed to return home. A manhunt is under way in the area around the Portalé pass.

French and Spanish police believe that the boy was abandoned while out trekking with his father who, officers suspect, was spooked by hikers heading in his direction. He and the boy raced off.

The English-language Basque news channel EITB, which is close to the nationalist cause, contradicted police reports and claimed the mother had called police to report her son missing.

The Spanish interior ministry said that Zaldua Korta joined Eta before 1977 and was a member of two commando units that killed, mostly with bombs, at least 10 people, mainly members of the security forces.

It said Zaldua Korta's victims included five civil guards, three police officers, an army colonel and a Basque mayor.

In an unrelated development, two suspected female Eta terrorists, former members of a Madrid commando unit, were extradited to Spain yesterday from France.

One of them, Ainhoa Mugica Goni, alias Olga, is accused of forming part of a commando unit which in April 1995 attacked a car carrying the future prime minister, José María Aznar, to work in Madrid.

One woman was killed and 15 people were injured when a roadside bomb exploded but the prime minister escaped unhurt.

· This article was amended on Monday August 13 2007. In the article above, we referred to an attack in April 1995 on a car carrying the then prime minister of Spain, José María Aznar. Mr Aznar was then the leader of the main opposition party. He did not become prime minister until the following year. This has been corrected.